The Sun Grew Dark
by superficialskull
Summary: Temporary title. Ragnarok is not a word of beauty; why name a child that, condemn it that way? During the war with Svartalfheim, Loki conceives Thor's daughter. He abandons her just as soon, but finds certain things, just like Ragnarok, rebound. (WARNING: This story is entirely about Thor/Loki and their angsty relationship, with the addition of their scary daughter)
1. The Dark World

It begins here: the violent descent of a waterfall, an echoing of a storm, and the bleak atmosphere of a dark world.

Standing at the edge between damp mist and jagged rock, Thor pins his weight against pale thighs as they open in invitation. He holds them apart, his bare back half-flooded in the light of day. The body below him presses into the shadows, as it should be - for he is Loki, born of shadows, and he is the tail-end of their secret union.

Concealing their actions, the waterfall roars on, creating a barrier over their rocky cave. It hides them in the hissing mist, engaging their desire, and brothers become lovers while the outside world is blind. Thor's breath is heady along Loki's neck, and the Trickster leans into his touch - so assertive, so raw, filled with energy violent as his lightning. They buck against each other in cycles of motion - and they _are_ cycles; light and darkness, noise and silence. They moan into each other's mouths, pressing skin to skin.

It begins this way because, not coincidentally, they are forming a metaphor. Like the river that begins steady and ends falling, like Ragnarok that delivers ends and brings new beginning, Thor is the beginning that Loki gives an end. One rise, one fall; imbalanced without the existence of both.

In his existence, Thor is the dominion. He crowds Loki, beckoned by the anger and lust and truth his brother coaxes out of him, pressing him into the wall of the cave. He is naked above the waist, exposing the musculature that transcribes his encounter in war. Thor pushes his brother into the dark, reminding him of the strength he so easily exerts - a trait that feeds Loki, makes him writhe against the other's form until they lock together perfectly.

The water sprays against Thor's back and all their flesh, forming beads of dampness that trickle down. Clouds collide in the sky, darkening the grey of that forsaken realm, pulling the brothers further into shadow. Black birds pass by, red eyes with omen.

"Of all the desolation in Asgard," Thor groans, "why here?"

"So that your cunt -" Loki unfastens Thor's pants lace by lace - "won't see you bending over your slut brother."

Thor grits his teeth, driving his pelvis into the smaller man. "How many blows does it take before you learn to address her properly?"

The Trickster grins. "As many as you see fit to kill me with."

"Her name is _Jane_." Thor leans in close, averting his brother's impertinence. "Remember it or Mjolnir will teach you to."

"Oh, Thor..." Loki tilts his head when lips invade his collarbone, inhaling the musk behind long, blonde tresses. "Admirable though your passion may be when it comes to threatening me, it would do you better not to traject violence with the same tongue you suck me with."

He gathers a fistful of Thor's hair and pulls him down with it, the Thunderer hissing in raw fury. Thor slams his hips into him, spreading him unbearably wider, and Loki yowls.

"What makes you certain I won't do it?" Thor's mouth brushes Loki's, hot breath spread between their closeness when the Trickster resettles his weight along the other's broad form. His eyes bear hatred and ire in their blue, but a glint of familiar brashness plays in them, and Loki rests his opinion on that.

His lips dance along the other's as he speaks, voice slippery and cool: "Because you'll be so very empty without me - and because you'll never again have Loki's thighs to take seat between."

A slow, curving grin creases Thor's mouth, and he closes the gap between them, kissing his Loki while the remainder of his clothes slip off. The Mischief Monger runs gritty nails down his back, feeling Thor hiss against his skin. The falls rumble as thunder in their ears, Loki grinding teeth to the feeling of raw, jutting rock against his back. Blood draws, the pain enriching.

Their bare bodies press now, frotting red, dripping lengths against each other. Loki whines into the Thunderer's ear, shivering with the lust he so eagerly consumes from this sin. He is a conformation of dark energy, and Thor feeds into it with much the same eagerness, his anger displaced in the potency he seeks to exert between his legs.

The air fuels that potency in the mist, the clash of water thundering powerfully.

"We don't have the aid to do this," Loki says between breaths. The friction between them pools heat into his belly, and he breaks away just enough to calm.

Thor reaches fingers behind his sack, pressing into Loki's dry cleft. The Trickster winces.

"I could put my mouth to you," Thor whispers on his lips. "Sweeten the way."

Loki moans. "You do so wish to break me, don't you."

Thor grunts, that spark of lust as lightning in his eye. "For all the destruction you've done? I would have nothing but your forfeiture."

"Mm." He leans into Thor's neck, cock twitching with want against the other's.

Then he grins. "I have an idea."

"Do you, now?"

"Pick me up."

With a groan and a hesitant glare, Thor bends his knee into the rock, lifting Loki's thighs under both arms. He grips tightly to the supple flesh under his hands as Loki slides his arms around his neck, and the Trickster lowers his gaze to concentrate.

Between Loki's legs, a transformation unfolds. Runes of seidr are put to work in his veins, and Thor watches as his cock slides into itself - a riddling sight - until it shrinks into his skin, a mere nub of flesh where it once stood. His balls collapse inward, forming a round mound - and from their crease, blooming out pink and slick, an entrance forms.

Thor looks up, reproachful, impressed, and lusting. "Trickster."

Loki sneers. "Better than your Earth whore."

Thor wrenches his weight into him, and he howls, the cry concealed under the voice of the falls. Loki whimpers - in fear, exhilaration, though they are always much the same - and Thor keeps him there, grinding his back into the stone until raw, ripe bruises draw.

"Do not mistake my indulgence for love," the Thunderer snarls - and Loki only shrieks with laughter into the damp air. "When this is done, we will return to Asgard for _Jane's_ sake. And you will rot in the injustice you've sowed, all by yourself in prison."

"How thoughtful. Love conquers the beast, who otherwise seeks out conquest in a fuck."

"That is all you are." Thor grits his teeth, and Loki slithers a hand down his length, gripping it between goading fingers.

"Oh, Thor," the Trickster whispers, shaking his head as he pulls at the thick member. "Foster has your heart, but I have your _head_ -" he snickers teasingly, bringing the crown of Thor's cock to his red slit - "and someday, you will confront it again, whether tomorrow, or the day I die."

He sinks down, and they connect. One beginning, one end. The violent thrash of waters pervades all other sounds in the distant realm - and fitfully, because they cry out in unison, grunting with lust and hate and everything in between. Loki is as silk inside, clenching and dripping, and Thor bucks into him, thrusting relentlessly. There is an angry passion in Thor's voice as he heaves, and Loki wraps legs around his back, heels digging with mad force into his flesh. Nails dig, muscles clamp, and their thrusts become ruthless, violent as the storm. Winds howl all around the woods, beating against the waters, but the brothers cannot hear beyond their own lust, rutting harder and faster. They remind each other of war, of how it is when they battle - and they know, strangely, fighting and fucking are wrought of the same ire.

Loki drags teeth over Thor's flesh when his clit is brushed with friction. His release comes sooner than anticipated, insides clamping around the thickness within him. Thor holds him tight, pressing Loki's back into the stone as he wrenches forward, seed flowing into the younger god as he groans. They are dizzy in their cloud, unthinking. Blood trickles along Loki's spine, sharp with pain, and his lips form a crooked smile against the dip in Thor's neck.

The storm settles into quietude, but the skies remain dark above their heads. It's a black land they've ventured into, but Loki is glad of its ominous shell, shielding the eyes of the outside realm.

The brothers sleep in their nudity that night, content to rest nearby the river. Loki watches Thor's angry brow soften as he sleeps, and he drifts soon after.

Grey skies greet Loki's eyes when he wakes, when he discovers discomfort churning below his belly. The source isn't the darkness. Not the realm. He looks at his dreaming brother, then back, clenching a hand over his abdomen.

Loki feels desolate, and yet so full. The source riddles his expectations - yet, he knows it the instant he feels it. Nestled in his magic-formed organs, something turns. A beginning.

A child.

He is with child.


	2. I, Weary of Scuttling In Shadow

Deep into space, where all that inhabit live in the vast darkness that pervades the galaxy as one endless hole, stands a man. He is broad in build and taller than his comrades, and being the sole survivor of the planet he destroyed, he is alone. His eyes watch the stars and darkness. He is a cruel man, a nihilist who feeds his emptiness with power. In solitude, he waits on a crater with a promise in his heart, clutching the gauntlet he wears around his wrist.

Out of black ash arises a form unto him: a woman, draped in a cloak with a hood over her head. She appears to him as she always does, aerial and mysterious. She fills him with doubt and lifts his spirit - a self-destructive paradox that has consumed his life, but he doesn't heed the warnings he has been given. His love for her is irrevocable, and he endures every pain she has ever put him through without looking back. He takes from her what she will give - and she gives so very little, at that, but he'll embrace it nonetheless with a fool heart and a willing mind.

The woman is Death, disguised behind the face of a young girl - a paradox, as well, for what she is in truth. But her lover knows what she is, as it was the skeleton underneath the cloak that he fell in love with.

Death circles him, her robes flowing in vacuous space. She will indulge his presence for the time being, asking him how many lives he has sacrificed in her name. Her response to it is never the same, sometimes greatly pleased, other times scorned. But her lover will kill for her nonetheless - men, women, gods, planets - in the hope of earning her affection.

Interrupting the time the man has with her, a guard runs to his side. The guard is of an alien race - all different servants at his hand - and in his arms, he holds a bundle.

"This was left on our ship," the guard tells him. "As tribute, the Chitauri think."

The alien holds up the bundle to him, and the man takes it for himself, running a thick, violet finger over it.

So small in his arms rests a baby: human in looks, peachy skin, and eyes that glint of neither blue nor green. The guard promptly exits, and Death leans in to view the child, her mouth a line.

"Tribute?" he says. "It seems so ordinary a prize, I wonder its origins."

Death's white eyes grow wide then, her expression familiar with poisonous intent.

"Let me have it," she says, reaching her hand into the bundle. "I want this child for myself."

"As sacrifice," he assumes without question - but she takes the babe from his hands without a glance.

Death's bony fingers glide over the child's skin, so cold a blue, hidden pigment rises from its cheeks. "You are so cute," she says to it, tone an eerie dripping echo, but the babe smiles at her nonetheless.

"Thanos." She turns to her lover again. "This is mine."

Death is truly a mystery to him, always swaying where she will, and this day, she has proven it yet again. Today, she has chosen life.

xxxxx

Thanos hardly sees the child, after. Death takes the babe in her arms and raises it for her own. On the day she comes back to him, she brings with her a small toddler - rosy cheeks, bright close eyes, and a full head of gold hair.

The child - a little girl - sits in Death's arm and leans against her, a silent smile across her face. Death seems to shower her with attention, caressing her cheek, kissing her face, whispering little things in her ear that keep her eyes filled with wonderment. She tells Thanos that the child holds strange power, that her blood is filled with ancient magic. The girl's grip on things is as a tight vice - strong, brimming with an energy that should later come to be feared.

"She likes that stone," Death says to Thanos, pointing to the red gem on his gauntlet. The child peers at his arm curiously, running a finger along the gem before he bats her away.

"I think she feels the power in it."

"All do," Thanos replies, staring down at the girl who deigns a dark mischief in her eye.

"She's quite powerful," Death adds. "Her strength will be valuable someday. Fit for destruction."

The mad king turns. "Says she who attests the very word at times. Tell me I'm wrong - that you were not fickle even as I destroyed Titan, my home planet."

The toddler listens as they talk, and looks to Death, sensing the full coldness of her presence. She curls an arm around her flowing body, skin absorbing grey paleness and blue.

"That was your decision to execute," the deity pronounces to Thanos, stepping in front of her adopted godling. "And you executed many, I know."

He means to answer, boiling with the emotions that wallow each time Death spurns him. The woman wraps her arms around the child, however, and they dissipate into the darkness of the galaxy, where she cannot hear his call. He clenches his fists regardless, crying out in his rage.

xxxxx

Time passes and agendas shift.

The little girl grows into her body day for day, gaining a voice that still chooses to exert silence. She becomes tall before her time seems fit, and her strength becomes as iron - thunderous when she uses it, the energy in her veins eager to be wielded like a weapon. She speaks in moderation, but she notices everything - a sharp mind in a too-able body.

Death keeps her close, but in a few short years, she begins to slip away. Exclusive from the child's knowledge, Death has found another toy - a lover on Earth, whom she visits more than her king. So, in turn, Death finds a place for child to be. It's temporary at first, but in the years, begins to draw out.

And it is here that the girl discovers a shift.

She is escorted to the main bridge of a ship, in a darker part of space. The first time Death sends her here, she is still small, and she understands little of where she is or why. Too young to comprehend what she observes, she is taken inside the ship, surrounded by metal and alien technology. Her hand is taken by guards - a strange race covered by the armor they wear - and she is laid across a cold metal table when they pull her up. She remembers nothing after this, as her mind flows deep into a sleep, the alien ship and guards all a blur.

It happens in longer stages as she grows - and it's then that she starts to understand.

Older, and taken into the ship many times, the girl acquaints to her environment. The stars orbit over her head, revealing the vast shell that is black space. At her sides are guards, less tall now that she is older - and by now, she has come to learn of their identity. They are a reptilian creature known as the Chitauri, and whatever is left of their race serves Thanos. She watches them closely; they're vicious things, spitting orders in their language amongst themselves.

One Chitauri wrenches her arm in hand, and she glares at him as she is pulled forward into their ship.

Within the walls, it's all aged, dark metal and machines that exhibit a mind of their own. The eyes of their strange biotechnology peer at her, and she looks into them, wondering who is watching back. At the center of a hall stands the table - that familiar metal she has laid upon all her life - and she begins to feel wary, objective.

Off to the side, a ray of light illuminates atop a pedestal, and floating there in orbit are familiar colors: the gems Thanos sports across his gauntlet. They glint in the girl's eye, holding their image in her mind as she is released from the guards.

Standing in her view, then, is Thanos. He is tall above her, muscular and broad, forming a shadow over the girl's head as if to symbolize the dominance he continuously exerts.

But she isn't afraid of him - hardly moved by his presence - glaring straight into him. The state of her face is feral, and he's never seen it this way.

The girl realizes just by looking at him: she is angry. She is unsettled. There is a pent-up darkness she feels toward this man, and rancor festers in her head the more she looks around. She doesn't understand why she is here, and this boils her blood for a reason undescribed. She senses lies, malignance, and it feeds her with an energy that craves to be exalted.

Thanos steps aside, revealing the table to her view. Tubular structures leer around it like snakes. A Chitauri guard pushes the girl forward, until her back is placed against the metal.

But she doesn't press into it.

She looks up at Death's lover - a mad king - erected over her in expectation. At her side are his men, containing her there, and from her view, the gauntlet gems circle and circle in their place. In this moment, she is a tool; there to be used when awake, there to be put out in darkness when not needed. She will fall asleep under this room, kept in darkness until Death returns.

But for how long? This answer no longer satisfies her.

Thanos steps in, leaning over. "It is time for you to dream," he tells her.

The girl only stares - and when he persists, she takes a step forward.

"I don't want to," she says, in a voice that reaps an angry spirit, longing to have vengeance. It's a threat - clear and warlike - and the child has spoken so little in her years, that this one phrase echoes its hostility off the walls.

The Chitauri stare, Thanos stares, but the protest is only momentarily regarded.

Two guards pull her arms back, and though she struggles at first, she succumbs to their order. The snakelike organs over her head inject into her skin. She waits for a moment.

Then there is nothing.

She slips into the dark once again.

xxxxx

As there must be a beginning, there must also be an end. It's there forever: a cycle.

Out of the void of space this one day, a bolt of lightning hits distant ground. The realm where it strikes is lightyears across the galaxy, part of a network among eight others. The source of the lightning is a hammer, which when it rises, shakes the earth with thunder.

To this girl, both the hammer and the storm do not register - for she's never seen either before. But floating in darkness within the shell she is kept, out of some odd fortune, she hears the thunder. The rattling is soft at first, alerting her skin of its presence; but it soon grows, and in her slumber, she stirs.

A loud _crack_ roars - a whiplash in her ears.

The lightning, though realms away, registers under her skin. Electricity comes sudden and piercing, jolting through her bones. It travels up her spine, curves her back. The thunder wakes her. Shakes her out of sleep. Kills her stasis, and she opens her eyes.

She is greeted with blackness. She sees nothing in the dark.

There are sharp pinpricks across her body - needles in her arms and legs.

The thunder rumbles in her head, unknown to her, and she realizes she is angry again. Appalled, enraged, burning with resentment.

She knows exactly what she hates, what makes her boil. There is something violent in her bones and brain, as if she is an animal subject to incarceration. She loathes Thanos, loathes this ship. As if it were meant to speak somewhere in her mind, the thunder from lightyears away has shocked her into knowing precisely what her body wants to do. It wants to rend, break, destroy - free itself from this shell. She needs control of herself again.

She tears her arms from the table, ripping the cords out of her flesh. Blood draws from the puncture marks, but in the dark she only feels the jab. She wrenches forward off the cold metal bed, falling across the floor with a heavy thud. Her arms bear her weight, slipping in the pools of red. Pain floods her gut, her limbs, her head - but she picks herself up, heaving, retching.

She is angry, and the anger shudders through her.

She must end it.

Clamboring in the dark, her hands search about. She beats against the walls with wretched strength, until a door opens. Light floods her eyes. She is out.

She throttles into a hall, vision racing this way and that, pulse thundering. She's covered in her own blood and grime, feeling her suit burn and peel from her skin.

Then she spots them: the Chitauri, cursing and pacing about the halls of their ship. They see her standing feet away and make to chase her.

Only, she's not running.

Out of a strange, hostile force inside of her, she doesn't flee; she runs to them like a storm. Her body evokes a deep longing, hungry to bash and rip and butcher. She flings her strength at them, a full crashing blow that isn't natural - isn't even expected. Her fists meet their metal, knees meet their skulls, and even through her struggling with them, they break. She tears their flesh in a rage not even they exalt.

When their bodies fall from her hands, she doesn't observe their damage. Their vile blood is on her skin now, almost burning, but she doesn't feel a thing through all her anger. They lay lifeless, no doubt tributes to Death now - an irony that fuels itself.

The girl keeps running. She breaks into another hall, her feet on the floor dynamic and brutal. More Chitauri pass her way, and like before, she becomes their murderer, conscience lost. Across from her as another lays dying, its matter spilling from its wounds, she sees one guard. He doesn't charge at her like the others, nor does he confront the violence she is reaping. They stare eye-to-eye in the distance between, and the girl flees, the brief moment gone.

The rush is a blur in her eyes. Red is all she sees, and alien metal. She fights her way past the armory with brute force, and in the midst of rage, she runs into a light.

xxxxx

Somewhere in the golden courtyard of a palace, a portal of every coloured ray bursts into the earth. It opens with lightning speed, glimmering in rainbow and vast torrents of light. The force of it drives the wind howling and skies storming, and with a jolt of its energy, it releases one body. The portal fades as quickly as it came, leaving behind runes of dark energy scorched into the ground.

Skin peeling from the burn of this fall, a girl - no older than pubescence transcribes - lifts herself up. From the distance, she is spotted by the eyes of guards and servants. They watch her collect herself raggedly, drawing enough energy to run. She runs directly into the palace, unstopped in her brutal steps, and trips on herself face first.

Without realizing it, however, she's tripped another person.

She looks up to find a man pulled into the heap, staring back at her in confoundment and confusion. Her mind a mess, she holds onto him in desperation - and he hisses at her, for she's covered in filth and ruin. Her dirty hair trails down her face, and her eyes deign so desperate an expression even as this man does not know her. Those eyes - so blue and green and yet neither - look so familiar to him, and he locks his gaze in them with a horror she won't understand.

The man jerks, pushing her off, still watching her even as he spurns her.

"Please...please..." The word repeats itself in her throat over and over as she looks into his face, his pale green eyes. She shudders violently, crumbling in the mess of herself, and when she opens one hand, she finds a red gem in her palm.

The man doesn't speak a word.

In his silence, a servant runs to them. She gasps at the sight, clutching the girl's shoulders with hesitance.

"By Bor," the woman exclaims, throwing a cloak over the child. "What has happened? Who are you?"

The girl shivers, realizing for the first time she was naked.

"I am Ragn," she says - and she repeats it, as if she needs reaffirmation. "I am Ragn."

The man watches as she is escorted out by the maid. Clutching his abdomen with a shaky hand, he sinks in dread.


End file.
